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Thursday, September 07, 2017

`But Him That Reads It is a Twit.'

In
Chekhov: Scenes from a Life (Free
Press, 2004), Rosamund Bartlett, a century after the writer’s death, visits the
Chekhov Salon Museum in Badenweiler, Germany, where Chekhov died on July 15,
1904. Opened in 1998, the site bills itself as the first dedicated to Chekhov “in
the western world.” He would have appreciated Bartlett’s nicely calibrated
tone:

“It
is located in the cultural centre built on the site of the original pump-room
[a word I haven’t heard in decades], where in former times gentlemen could
repair to smoke cigars and play cards, or dance with the ladies (if they had
removed their hats).”

On
display is a pair of Chekhov’s pince-nez, a visual trademark for the writer, though
he only wore them late in life. For Bartlett the comic centerpiece (in the
Chekhovian sense) of the museum is the visitors’ book. She records the
heartfelt inscription left by a literary pilgrim -- “I am touched to the depths
of my soul” – as well as the less reverent sentiment contributed by a German
teenager: “I was here and found it dead boring.” A subsequent visitor, “a prim
professor doctor from Moscow State University,” writes that the teenager and
her ilk “in my opinion should not be allow to visit museums at all.” Bartlett
might be recounting an exchange of tantrums on Twitter. Instead, she reminds us
of a comic sketch Chekhov wrote the year he turned twenty-four, “The Complaints
Book,” which describes the comment book left in the waiting room of a
provincial train station. After the introductory paragraph, the story is
nothing but a transcription of the ridiculous inscriptions left by visitors. The
excerpts are taken from Harvey J. Pitcher’s translation in The Comic Stories (Ivan R. Dee, 1999):